This post is to recap on our 48-hour game journey and double as an After Action Review!

Documentation Slides - Contains Ideation, Concept Art, Animations & Assets

Timeline & Pipeline - Timeline and delegation of roles are found here in detail.

We were running on a 48-hour clock and the documentation will be based on the hours worked on the project.

1 - 2 Hours

The team got together for meeting #1 to brainstorm ideas and game ideas, we created 5 ideas in a list and each went into detail about their idea to get others excited about making their game idea into reality.

We came to a conclusion to explore Ethan's game of a Bubblegum theme and the genre of the game is a platformer. Focusing around on movement and dodging enemies and obstacles.

We also delegated roles and tasks to everyone so we could all work on the project.

15 - 16 Hours

Everyone did their tasks and we gathered up 15 hours later for meeting #2. The meeting was to check up on progress and to delegate new tasks to those who had completed their previous work. Up to this point, the art side has gotten a good basis of how the design of the characters, enemies, and environment will look in the game. Concept art and design were explored and voting was frequent in the group chat. Minor changes were proposed since we were short of time and needed to push forward the project. 

There were a huge time spent trying to resolve a github push and pull issue from the coding side which took a lot  of time. Delaying their work on the game itself.

However, after it's resolved. The coding side was starting to develop the mechanisms using placeholders and they efficiently split the work to not have any clashing errors.

21 - 25 Hours

We got into a mini meeting #3 about 5 hours later to check in on progress. The art side has mostly completed their concept and was working on animations and clean-ups. The coding side has finished up the moving mechanism and started to add the enemies, and world and dabbled into the boss. Using the art assets and using it as the new placeholders gave us a better sense of how the game will feel and look as well.

One of the highlights I think really stood out up to this point was the grappling mechanism that Wei En has achieved.

33 - 34 Hours

We had our meeting #4 on the 3rd day, 6 hours right before the game jam ended. We have about 60% of the game done at this point. The art side has completed all animations and assets and is waiting for the coding side to develop the games. To maximize efficiency, the Art team was tasked to get the itch.io page ready and presentable. When the game is built, it can immediately be added to the itch.io and we can hand it in for submission. The coding side was facing many technical difficulties and had to spend a lot of time rectifying them. 

47 Hours (Last Hour)

As the team eagerly waits for the game to be built and uploaded, we had to rectify resolution sizes and discovering bugs and issues that was in the final build. However, due to time constraints and the lack of play testing, we weren't able to bug fix and had to leave it in the final submission. 

Overall, the game was well put together and we even included a functioning boss fight. I think it was a proper game minus the bugs.

AAR Pointers

What we did do well?

• Task delegation was pretty good. Good teamwork
• The game concept and design are good. Scope is a good concept had plenty of ideas to work around. 
• Quick to come to a common agreement.
• The design was quite standardized even with multiple concept artist 
• Itch.io page was done really well. Thanks to Shu Hui and Charmaine 
• The animation was nice. 
• Spider is really well-rigged and is very cool. 
• The team worked very efficiently together and was always ready to help and fill in when help was needed

What went wrong?

• Merge last minute. Hence, not enough playtesting time. 
• Flies didn’t show up in the final build
• Missing links when Wei en import Daph spider, The Solution was to unity can export package.
• File organization and naming conventions could be better
• Could have animated the spider more efficiently. Could have more animations.
• Fishbone asset could show the hitbox clearly.
• Items that damage the player is not visually clear.

What we can do in the future?

• Should have done GitHub repository testing before the jam. 
•  GitHub merge issues could’ve been avoided by making the Repository with a gitignore instead of adding it after creation.

Anything else to note?

• Theming didn’t come through that clearly. 
• Controls are a bit confusing for first-time player.
• Good balance of coders and art side.
• Important to have visual cues

Conclusion

Overall, With the limited time of 48 hours and having 8 man to work along side with one another, I think we have made a really well put together game. With a bit more bug fixing and polishing, I think the game will be even better! I enjoyed my experience and learnt a lot from this project and I think the rest of the team have the same sentiment.

Thank you to anyone that read through this devlog!

Peace out, Syl~